Creating a strong password.

In light of what I've been recently researching and posting about virus and trojans which are here:

15 Million PCs Infected

and

Antivirus 2009, What a Pain!

I felt obligated to post this one.

OK, Where do we start,

Creating a Strong password

Pick a strong password. There are a few great guidelines to having a secure password.
- At least 6 Characters
- Have the password contain both alphabet and numeric characters
- If possible, have the password contain non-character symbols like these: @#$%^&**()!
- Try not to use straight forward dictionary words, as a start someone who really wanted to get into your account will somehow utilize a program and it will start with the dictionary and names.

As a great example, We’ll create one here, start with a phrase like:

Merry christmas everyone

*Keep the spaces in since they are non-standard characters. We’ll add more later.

Merry christmas everyone

*pick some letters to substitue with numbers for this example I’ll choose to replace the “E” with the number 3, and the “o” with a zero “0”

M3rrychristmas3v3ry0n3

Next put some more non-standard characters in there. I’ll choose to replace the “I” with an exclamation mark ! In total I'll add one to replace the "I" and another at the end just for fun.

M3rrychr!stmas3v3ry0n3!

And there you have it. We have just built a very strong password. Although I would stongly recommend not to use this password for your personal use, I’m sure you could use your creativity and pick out a password that is right for you.

General notes about passwords, the people who usually want access to your system are sometimes the people who may come in contact with you frequently, so using for example, your children’s names, your phone number, the company you work for would be highly not recommended.